As the Faculty of Health Sciences at Nelson Mandela University and its counterpart at the University of Oldenburg have both been established only recently, they do not yet have a history of past co-operation. But they have commonalities that include medicine and health sciences forming a single faculty, a focus on primary care, and an interest in advancing interprofessional training in medicine.

Co-operation in the following four areas will be explored in 2023/2024 and it is anticipated that opportunities in four fields will merit closer investigation:

1. Teaching and learning:

• Comparison of the medical curricula at each university to identify feasible time slots for student exchanges
• Comparison of the models used for interprofessional education and training and skills development
• Implementation of primary healthcare in the curricula at both universities
• Nursing sciences
• Degree programmes in the natural sciences with links to medicine

2. Health sciences:

• Models for healthcare in rural areas and healthcare close to the community
• Comparison of healthcare systems (extension of the Cross-Border Institute of Healthcare Systems and Prevention (CBI))
• Interprofessional health research
• Mobile health (mHealth) models
• Biostatistics for the health sciences

3. Natural sciences:

• Hearing research, especially the H4all virtual hearing clinics
• Neurosciences
• Molecular biomedicine

4. Clinical (research) collaboration:

• Exchange programme for postgraduate clinical training
• Clinical research (for example, clinical studies)
• Models of emergency medical care

After this exploratory phase, the most promising topics for long-term co-operation will be selected with reference to the strategic long-term aims of both faculties and the existing links between departments at each university. Decisions will be made in a joint meeting of the leaders of each school in 2024/25.